Shake
by MaverikFlame
Summary: It was a late run. Last job of the day, Mike'd said. A dead drop, loose floorboard in the abandoned building. In and out. (M rating for attempted non-con)


_A/N:_ Based on the following prompt: "During a run/pickup Jesse is attacked from behind and almost assaulted but Mike swoops in and saves him. Afterwards Jesse is more shaken than he thought he'd be. Mike helps him deal."

Why do I enjoy hurt!Jesse so much...

* * *

**Shake**

Jesse's fingers shake as he presses a cigarette to his lips, as he fumbles for a light. The match _scritches_ against the side of the box, once, twice, but doesn't catch.

"Kid."

Mike is as dark, still, and omnipresent as a shadow. He just sort of hovers there, a part of the night.

_Scritch_.

Finally the match flares to life, and Jesse stutters out a breath, focuses on keeping his hands steady as he lights the cigarette.

Sweet nicotine fills his lungs, and finally, _finally_ his shaking fingers start to still. The prickle of tears is still there in his eyes, though, teased to the surface by the sting of smoke.

He feels Mike staring at him, with that gargoyle stillness and intensity he knows too well.

"You okay?"

Mike's voice is measured – always measured – but it's soft now, too, as soft as a voice like Mike's can be. Something about its timbre resonates in Jesse's bones, makes them vibrate and shake together and – _fuck_ – but there go his tears now, spilling over before he can stop them.

He wipes them away between drags and turns away.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

Words squeezed through a tight throat, weak and unconvincing.

Mike stares a beat longer, then another, and then he's sliding down the wall to crouch next to Jesse.

"Alright," he says, drags out the word as though examining each letter. "You wanna tell me what happened back there?"

_Not really_, Jesse thinks but doesn't say. He runs a hand over his shaven head, feels the prickle of stubble under his palm.

He shrugs, lights a second cigarette and takes a long drag. He feels Mike's stare sharpen but chooses not to care.

"I dunno," he says. "Didn't see the guy, I guess. Caught me off guard."

"That's not what I mean, Jesse."

* * *

It was a late run. The moon painted the desert a dusty gray and cast shadows that were long and deep. Jesse's eyes burned from exhaustion, and he itched for a hit of _something_, anything, even a smoke. He'd chewed his fingernails down to the nub.

Last job of the day, Mike'd said. A dead drop, loose floorboard in the abandoned building. In and out. He'd sent Jesse in and kept watch.

Jesse didn't remember much, wasn't paying enough attention, which he guessed was the problem (_Junkie idiot!_ he could hear Mr. White calling him). He remembered rubbing his eyes and yawning into his hand, remembered pulling up the old floorboard and rooting around, not finding the money, but he didn't remember the crack of a two-by-four against the side of his head.

He certainly didn't remember crumpling to the floor.

When his eyes fluttered open, his head rang and throbbed with every twitch of movement, and he laid there and choked back a groan. Over the ringing, he could hear a voice muttering. It took him a while to sort out that it was actually two voices, hissing to one another in rapid-fire Spanish.

Jesse tried to get his hands under him and push himself up, but a boot to his ribs sent him flat again. Now his body was comprised of two throbbing points of pain.

"_Fuck_," he grunted.

Then there was a weight on his legs with the warmth and solidity of a human body. Hands grabbed his wrists, twisted them hard behind his back. Jesse's chin dug into floorboards that smelled like rot and piss, and it was hard to breathe.

He kicked and cursed and spat, but he was too dizzy to put any real strength behind it. A hand wrapped around his throat, five points of pressure in the shape of digging fingers, and then he couldn't breathe at all. The man pinning Jesse growled in his ear, and _fuck,_ but Jesse wished he hadn't skipped so many Spanish classes back in high school (he could see Mr. White's smug reaction to that, the asshole).

"Let... let go," he wheezed. More growled words in his ear that he didn't understand, and then the hand on his windpipe was gone. But te very human – and very heavy – weight straddling his thighs and hovering over his back stayed, and that was somehow worse.

"Hey. Hey, yo, what do you want? Qué, uh... qué wanto, muchacho?"

Another low conversation in Spanish. The man holding him was pressed close enough that his voice reverberated in Jesse's chest.

Jesse strained to look, but he couldn't make out the second guy in the latchwork of shadows. He wondered how long he'd been out, if Mike was going to get off his fat ass and help him anytime soon.

Then there was a second set of hands all over him, patting him down, roughly searching inside his jacket, under his shirt, the waistband of his jeans. His gun was tossed aside, skittering across the floor.

"Hey! Hands off me, bitch!"

More Spanish, then laughter, and the man searching him crooned something that sounded like a question as his hand returned to the waistband of Jesse's jeans, slid down to his crotch and _squeezed_.

Jesse yelped and jerked back, tried to buck off the guy holding him, still pinning him down. The man pinning him just laughed louder and moved his hips lewdly against the back of Jesse's thighs.

Jesse's body was one giant pulse, his heart throbbing loud and fast, panicked. The rough touch, the press of a body at his back, and the hot breath stirring the hairs on his neck conjured shards of a memory, scattered and fractured like Mr. White's precious Blue: _his body, limp on a couch and strung out on drugs at a stranger's party, speech slurring and movements jerky and sluggish; cottony thoughts that something wasn't right, that he couldn't remember what he'd taken or how much or if his heart was supposed to beat this slow; bony fingers peeling off his clothes and moving him, molding him like putty, and in his mind he kicked and screamed, but all that came out was a mumble and a shove that wouldn't move a kitten; the pain, the feel of – of – _

There was no hand on his throat anymore, but he couldn't breathe couldn't breathecouldn't_breathe – _

There was the shot of a gun, loud and echoing, and the smell of gunpowder, a roar of pain and the copper smell of blood. The man above Jesse scrambled to get up and off him, and then Jesse was moving too, all rage and blood and pain as he tackled the man, pummeled his face, grabbed a fistful of hair and slammed his head against the floor, again, again, _again_.

The sickly sweet smell of blood overpowered the tang of gunpowder and piss. His hands kept moving, kept shoving and clawing and squeezing, until they were wet and sticky and slid against the raw skin he was slamming into the floor.

"Jesse! Hey!" Strong arms wrapped around his chest, pinned his arms to his sides. "Kid, c'mon! That's enough!"

Jesse struggled, but the grip tightened and he found himself being dragged back out of the building and into the moonlight.

The rugged voice at his ear said his name like a mantra: _Jesse, Jesse, kid, calm down, Jesse, c'mon_. Reality and the present trickled back into place, and Jesse realized that he was hyperventilating and making a sound somewhere between a growl and a whimper.

"Jesse. Jesse, hey."

Jesse sank against the body behind him and clutched the arms around his chest. "Mike," he choked out. In the moonlight, he could see the blood covering his hands, pooling in the creases between fingers. He was getting blood all over Mike's jacket, but the older man didn't say anything and Jesse didn't let go.

* * *

Jesse takes another pull of his cigarette. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the drying, bloody handprints still on Mike's sleeve.

"Kid," Mike says, and Jesse (hates that he) needs the concern he hears there, even if his first instinct is to bristle and push away (_be the blowfish, Jesse_). "You want to tell me it's none of my business, you go right ahead, because it isn't. But you're not 'good', so don't lie to me."

Jesse stares down at his blood-caked fingers, at the red fingerprints he left on the cigarette. Cleaning around and under the nailbeds is always the hardest, and he wonders how long he'll have to scrub them to make them look clean. He knows from experience that they'll never _feel_ clean.

"It's none of your business," Jesse murmurs.

Mike nods, drops a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. Jesse leans into the touch before he can stop himself, and then he's folded under Mike's arm. Mike's thumb rubs circles along Jesse's shoulder, and this time the touch and warmth is something grounding.

Jesse sighs around his cigarette. "Guess we gotta clean that up, huh?" he hooks a thumb towards the wall, towards the abandoned room with dead men whose faces Jesse hasn't even seen.

Mike shrugs, pats Jesse's shoulder before pulling his arm back. "In a minute," he says. "They're not going anywhere. Finish your cigarette."

When Jesse reaches for a third smoke, Mike says, "Don't even think about it." Jesse smiles and puts it back with fingers that no longer shake.


End file.
